Tuesday, February 23, 2010

AT&T Global Dialer and Verizon Access Manager Don't Get Along

If you use Verizon as your cellular Internet provider and you are going to install and use the AT&T Global Dialer on your computer you may run into some issues.  Typically users who have Verizon Access Manager (VZAccess) installed cannot install AT&T Global and get it working - it will stop installing then roll back the install.  In some cases it also prevents VZAccess from functioning properly even though it was removed.

This has to do with the way AT&T Global Dialer inserts itself in the network stack - their process is messy and dangerous to put it nicely.

So you've installed AT&T and now VZAccess doesn't work?  Uninstall AT&T Global  if it managed to install, uninstall VZAccess, then restore your system to a point prior to the installation of AT&T' Global.  Once the system restore is finished you may reinstall VZAccess and it whould work.

So you can't live without AT&T Global?  You will need to download the installation app, but don't install it yet.  Uninstall VZAccess, reboot, THEN install AT&T.  Once AT&T is safely installed and your system has been rebooted you may then install VZAccess.

Do not taunt AT&T Global Dialer.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Server 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 x64 Terminal Server Software Installation/Uninstallation Slow

Link goes to post that helped the most (I don't make this stuff up myself)!

I found that my Server 2003 x64 Enterprise Terminal Server was taking a stupid long time to install and remove applications.  It was making me crazy!  This server has 1TB of hdd space (500+GB free), hardware RAID (with a battery, so write-back wasn't an issue), dual Quad-Core Xeon's, and 8GB of RAM.  Everything I installed took an eternity (7-Zip took 45 minutes!)

After much reading I found a forum post saying that someone had used Process Explorer while removing software and was seeing huge amounts of data being copied out of the registry that contained Hewlett-Packard in its key.  Further searches have found that when users connect to a Terminal Server and fallback drivers are configured it will try to install the users print drivers in the server, fail, go for the fallback driver, then never remove the installed (nonworking) driver info from the registry.

All the extra info in the registry was being read and written to a backup of the registry during software installs, taking a really long time.  Deleting these keys and their subkeys fixed the trouble.

REMEMBER TO BACK YOUR REGISTRY UP BEFORE MAKING CHANGES TO IT!

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\RefHive\Hewlett-Packard]

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Hewlett-Packard]



Reboot and feel the joy!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Intalling IPCop + USB Keyboard = Headache

Link goes to a bug report in the ipcop-devel board.

IPCop 1.4.20 has trouble installing on computers with USB keyboards - on mine it was sticking at the blue screen just prior to the language selection dialog.  Unfortunately many new computer don't come with PS/2 ports, so USB is a must.

If you unplug your USB keyboard after hitting ENTER to start installation it will start properly (minor errors regarding the keyboard will be seen in the boot messages).  When you see the language dialog you may plug in the keyboard, wait a few seconds (I press the NumLock to see if the light toggles) then proceed normally.